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HISTORY 



BY 

JOHN H. B. LATROBE, 

OF MARYLAND. 



THE HISTORY 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE; 



CONTAINED IN 



AN ADDEESS, 



DELIVERED BY 



/ 
JOHN II. B. LATROBE, 



OF JI A 11 Y L A N D , 



THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 



November 8, 1854. 




PRESS OF THE SOCIETY. 

1855. 






PHILADELPHIA: 
T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 



CORRESPONDENCE 



Philadelphia, November 16, 1854. 
Dear Sir : — 

At a meeting of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
held on the 13th instant, the following resolution was unanimously 
adopted : — 

Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be presented to John 
H. B. Latrobe, Esq., for his very able and instructive Anniversary 
Address, delivered on the 8th instant ; and that he be requested 
to furnish a copy for publication. 

The undersigned were appointed a committee to carry this 
resolution into effect; and we concur in the hope that you will 
comply with the wish of the Society to render your interesting 
discourse permanently and generally accessible to our fellow- 
citizens. 

We are, very respectfully, 

Your obedient servants, 

JOB R. TYSON, 

WM. PARKER FOULKE, 

W. B. REED, 

A. L. ELWYN, 

J. FRANCIS FISHER. 

To John H. B. Latrobe, Esq. 

Baltimore. 



IV CORRESPONDENCE, 



Baltimore, November 29, 1854. 
Gentlemen : — 

I have your letter of the 16th instant, asking for a copy of 
my address delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 
on the 8th instant. I inclose it ; and take the occasion to thank 
you for the kindness of the terms in which the request has been 
conveyed. 

Remaining, gentlemen, 

Your obedient servant, 

JNO. H. B. LATROBE. 

To Messrs. J. R. Tyson, 

W. Parker Foulke, 
William B. Reed, 
A. L. Elwyn, and 
J. Francis Fisher. 



AD D EE S S. 



GENTLEMEN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

OF PENNSYLVANIA:— 

I AM here, to-niglit, a citizen of Maryland, honored 
by your invitation to address you on the occasion of 
your anniversary; and the topic I have chosen is the 
boundary between our respective States. 

Adjacent land-owners rarely take much interest in 
the title, quality, or culture of their neighbors' fields; 
but they are generally sufficiently sensitive to the 
true location and maintenance of the division fences. 
I have, therefore, thought that I might count upon 
your patience, while I occupied my allotted hour 
with the history and description of Mason and 
Dixon's line. 

There is, perhaps, no line, real or imaginary, on 
the surface of the earth — not excepting even the 
equator and the equinoctial — whose name has been 
oftener in men's mouths during the last fifty years. 
In the halls of legislation, in the courts of justice, in 
the assemblages of the people, it has been as familiar 



b THE HISTORY OF 

as a household word. Not that any particular inte- 
rest was taken in the line itself; but the mention of 
it was always expressive of the fact, that the States 
of the Union were divided into slaveholding and 
non-slaveholding — into Northern and Southern;^ and 
that those, who lived on opposite sides of the line of 

' See Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 390, who says: "That that line (referring to 
Mason and Dixon's) forms the present division between the States resting on 
free labor, and the States that tolerate slavery, is due, not to the philan- 
thropy of Quakers alone, but to climate." Perhaps'less to climate than to 
interest. Slavery, south of Mason and Dixon's line, will cease to exist so 
soon as it ceases to be the interest of iand-owners to hold, and work their 
fields with, slaves. Bancroft's mistake is in attributing slavery to climate, 
which is unchanging, and which would make the institution lasting, instead 
of to interest, which is changeable, and which may cause slavery to cease to 
exist. And although climate certainly is connected with the interest which 
now maintains slavery, yet interest may readily become paramount to the 
effects of climate. Thus, there are very many, indeed, who believe, that if 
the "abolition excitement" had not made slavery in IMaryland and Kentucky, 
and in many parts of Virginia, a matter of State pride, laws for prospective 
emancipation would long ago have been passed ; and for the simple reason 
that, while slave-labor is profitable in the culture, just now, of cotton, and 
sugar, and rice, it is not so profitable — in many instances, it is a losing busi- 
ness — in the culture of wheat. The slavery question of the United States is 
a question of interest ; and its solution will be found in the increasing white 
population of the country, the consequent reduction of wages, and the great 
ultimate result — the production, by free labor, of the chief staples of the coun- 
try cheaper than they can be produced by slave-labor. Voluntary manu- 
missions will then free the slaves, because it will be to the interest of the 
masters to get rid of an expensive labor, that they may substitute a cheaper 
one; and colonization in Africa, which has already built up a Republic there, 
will, by that time, have established a commerce with that country, which 
will afford the same means for the emigration of the colored race that com- 
merce with Europe now affords for bringing a free white population to our 
shores. 



MASON AND DIXON S LINE. i 

separation, were antagonistic in oi^inion upon an all- 
engrossing question, whose solution, and its conse- 
quences, involved the gravest considerations, and had 
been supposed to threaten the integrity of the Re- 
public. Its geographical, thus became lost in its 
political, significance; and men cared little, when 
they referred to it, where it ran, or what was its his- 
tory — or whether it was limited to Pennsylvania, or 
extended, as has, perhaps, most generally been sup- 
posed, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It suggested 
the idea of negro slavery; and that, alone, was 
enough to give it importance and:. notoriety, though 
only as a name. f^ 

A consequence of this state of things has been to 
perpetuate the memory of the old surveyors who 
established it. A rare good fortune as regards their 
fame; for, while the engineers who located the road 
across the Simx)lon have been forgotten in the all- 
absorbing renown of the master whom they served — 
while, of the thousands who sail past the Eddystone, 
not one, perhaps, knows who it was that erected, on 
a crag in the midst of the sea, the wondrous light- 
house that has now defied the tempests of a cen- 
tury — while oblivion has been the lot of other bene- 
factors of mankind, whose works, of every-day utility, 
should have been their enduring monuments — Charles 
Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who, eighty-six years 
ago, ran a Hue through the forest, until the Indians 
forbade the further progress of chain and compass, 



8 THE HISTORY OF 

and whose greatest merit seems to have been that of 
accurate surveyors/ have obtained a notoriety for 
their names as lasting as the history of our country. 

An inspection of the map of the United States 
shows the boundaries, in most cases, to be, either 
rivers, the crests of mountain ranges, parallels of lati- 
tude, or meridians of longitude. In but a single in- 
stance has the circle, with its geometrical accuracy, 
been employed to indicate a dividing line of conti- 
guous States; and the inquiry at once suggests itself, 
why the southern frontier of Pennsylvania was not 
prolonged to the New Jersey shore, why the eastern 
one of Maryland was not made to strike it, and why 
a circle should be the northern boundary of Dela- 
ware — the odd result of Avhich has been to leave so 
narrow a strip of Pennsylvania between Delaware 
and Maryland, that the ball of one's foot may be in 
the former, the heel in the latter, while the instep 
forms an arch over a portion of the "Keystone State" 
itself. The explanation of this is closely connected 
with our history, and will be given as we progress 
with it. 

On the 20th June, 1632, Charles the ^niJoml, then 
in the eighth year of his reign, granted to Cecilius 
Calvert, Lord Baron of Baltimore — 



' Mason and Dixon were, at dififerent times, elected members of the 
American Philosophical Society — Mason on the 27th March, 17G7, and 
Dixon on the 1st April, 1768; and, in the notice of their election, they are 
styled, each, "Survej'or, of London." — Procecdinjs of Amer. Phil. Soc. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 9 

"All that part of the Penmsula, or chersonese, 
lying in the parts of America between the ocean on 
the east, and tlie Bay of Chesapeake on the west, 
divided from the residue thereof by a right line, 
drawn from the promontory or headland called Wat- 
kin's Point, situate upon the bay aforesaid, and near 
the river of Wighco on the west, unto the main 
ocean on the east,- and between that boundary on the 
south, aM*H»hnt part of the Bay of Delaware on the 
north, which lieth under the fortieth degree of lati- 
tude, where New England terminates."^ 

At this early day, the great States of Pennsylvania 
and New York had no existence in any shape, and 
the northern boundary of Maryland was the southern 
boundary of New England. Within the latter, New 
Plymouth had been planted in 1620, and Massachu- 
setts Bay in 1629. In Maryland, the only settle- 
ments were those made by William Claiborne, in 
1631, on Kent Island, in the Chesapeake. The name 
of Claiborne, in connection with Maryland, suggests 
at once an episode of romantic interest. The great 
living historian of our country, who first mentions 
him as " a man of resolute and enterprising spirit,"^ 
introduces him into the narrative of events with dra- 
matic power, when he describes the landing of Leon- 
ard Calvert at St. Mary's, in 1634, and adds, that 

' Kilty's Laws of Maryland. 

2 Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 236. 



10 THE HISTORY OF 

" Claiborne also appeared, though as a prophet of ill 
omen, to terrify the company by predicting the fixed 
hostility of the natives." Afterwards, when dwelling 
on the " auspices under which the province of Mary- 
land stairted into being," the same historian says: 
"Everything breathed peace but Claiborne." Again, 
he calls him "the malignant Claiborne;" again, "the 
restless Claiborne;" and even when mentioning his 
favorable reception by Charles the ^mmm^ on his 
visit to England, attributes it, in part, to "his false 
representations."^ Chalmers, largely quoted by Ban- 
croft, styles Claiborne " the evil genius of Maryland," 
and speaks of him as one who seemed " to have been 
born to be the bane of the province;"^ and other 
historians, taking their cue from Chalmers, place him 
in the category of unscrupulous men, the exhalations 
of unsettled periods. McMahon alone speaks not 
unkindly of him; and yet, even McMahon calls him 
" the notorious William Claiborne."^ But, twenty- 
four years is a long while for mere bravado and in- 
trigue, in a bad cause, to maintain possession of the 
public mind; and it is difficult to believe that Clai- 
borne, who, unquestionably, occupied it for this 
length of time, had not a better claim, and was not a 
better and truer man, than historians, thus far, have 

> Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. 1. pp. 246, 248. 
^ Chalmers's rolitical Annals, pp. 210, 221. 
" McMahon's History of Maryland, p. G. 



MASON AND DIXON's LINE. 11 

been willing to admit. The accounts that we possess 
of him, unfortunately for his memory, have been 
transmitted by his political opponents. The untiring 
adversary of Lord Baltimore, his reputation has been 
made to suffer, that the other's praise might be ex- 
aggerated. But the time Avill arrive, it is hoped, 
when his memory will be relieved from the imputa- 
tions of contemporary partisans, and when the truth 
wiU be known in regard to him ;^ and when he will 
be recognized as the brave soldier, the gallant gentle- 
man, acute in council, whom danger could not turn 
aside nor defeat dishearten — the statesman of the 
wilderness, the attainted of the proprietary govern- 
ment, only to become, in turn, the commissioner of 
the Commonwealth of England, to subjugate the pro- 
vince, from which he had been driven as a rebel; and 
who, for a quarter of a century, whether in power 
or out of power, exercised an influence, or inspired 
a dread, due alone to " his unceasing efforts to main- 



' Mr. S. F. Streeter, of Baltimore, Secretary of the Maryland Historical 
Society, has devoted himself to the preparation of a History of "Claiborne 
and his Times," and has collected an amount of rare, and curious, and au- 
thentic information, to which I have had the privilege of referring, that fully 
justifies all that is said of Claiborne in the text. For nearly fifty years, he 
■\vas in active life ; one-half of that time in iNIaryland, the rest of it in Vir- 
ginia, where he died at an advanced age, honored and lamented. His lineal 
descendants are numerous, and many of them have been prominent in the 
affairs of the country, as Governors of States, Senators and Representatives 
in Congress, &c. &c. The publication of Mr. Streeter's work will furnish a 
valuable contribution to the colonial history of Maryland and Virginia. 



12 THE HISTORY OF 

tain, by courage and address, the territory which his 
enterprise had discovered and planted."^ 

But Claiborne's claims had no ultimate effect upon 
the boundaries of Maryland ; nor would they now be 
alluded to, save that no sketch, however rapid, of 
Maryland affairs, during his lifetime, would be com- 
plete, wherein his name chanced to be omitted.^ 

Trouble, however, was brewing for Lord Baltimore, 
in regard to boundary, in another quarter. Godyn, 
a Hollander, had purchased from the natives a body 
of land, extending for thirty miles northwardly 
from Cape Henlopen. This was in 1629;"' and in 
1631,^ De Vries, another Hollander, planted a colony 



• McMabon, p. 7. 

2 In all the histories I have seen, wherein Claiborne's name is mentioned, 
it is spelt with y, not i. But Claiborne's own spelling was with an i, not a 
\j, in the first syllable — as is proved by the two fao-similes of autographs, for 
'which I am indebted to Mr. Streeter : one from a petition to Charles the 
I #MiiM^ which dates back to the early part of his Maryland troubles ; and 
one, dated in 1676, when he was an aged man. 

From a retilion to Charles the 4kmmk /UAIr March 13, 1G76-7. 



^"r-^m: ^^^ rf[puiirm 



The curious in such matters may be interested in knowing that Claiborne's 
coat of arms was thus blazoned : Argent — three chevrons interlaced, at the 
base, sable, with a chief of the last. 

3 Brodhead's History of New York, p. 200. 

■« Ihid., p. 206. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 13 

and built a fort within the territory, caUing it Swaan- 
cndael, not far from the present site of Lewistown. 
Not long afterwards, the Indians destroyed the settle- 
ment, put the inhabitants to death, and repossessed 
themselves of the land. They only covered up, how- 
ever, they did not eradicate, a seed that was one 
day to germinate and grow, until it bore bitter fruit 
for the Lord Proprietary of Maryland. 

When, therefore, Leonard Calvert arrived at St. 
Mary's, in 1634, the soil within the limits of the 
charter^ was in the possession of the natives,^ Clai- 
borne's plantations alone excepted; and, had he made 
a settlement on the eastern shore of the Peninsula, 
there would, in all probability, never have been a 
State of Delaware. But in 1638,^ a company of 
Swedes and Fins, under the auspices of Chancellor 
Oxenstiern, repurchased from the natives the land 
formerly sold to the Dutch, and built a fort at the 
mouth of Christina Creek, which they occupied until 
1655, when an invading force from New Amsterdam, 

' The Dutch had possession of the left, or cast bank of the Delaware, prior 
to this time. This possession, however, as was always contended, gave them 
no claim to the west shore, which was not affected in any way, by purchase or 
possession, until the purchase by Godyn. The first settlement of the Dutch 
in the Delaware was on the present Jersey shore, about four miles below 
Philadelphia, where Fort Nassau was built in 1G23. — Brodhead's History of 
New York, p. 153. 

^ Swaaneudael was abandoned by De Vries on the 14th April, 1G33. — Brod- 
head's nisiory of Neiv York, p. 228. 

3 Brodhead, p. 282. 



14 THE HISTORY OF 

under Peter Stuyvesant, established the Dutch rule, 
and carried back the Dutch title, by relation, to the 
purchase by Godyn,^ and the settlement by De Vries 
at Swaanendael. 

In 1659, Lord Baltimore seems to have become 
uneasy about the increase of the Dutch power in De- 
laware, and he sent instructions to Maryland to have 
the matter looked to." Fendall was then governor.^ 
An embassy was resolved on, as a preliminary to the 
severer measures recommended by the Proprietary; 
and Colonel Nathaniel Utie,^ whose name is still 
preserved in the Island of Spes-Utise, at the mouth of 
the Susquehanna, headed a deputation to "the pre- 
tended people" across the Peninsula, informing them 
that " they were seated within his lordship's province 

' In the histories of Maryland, this is called " Hore Kill," " Hoar Kill," 
*' The AVhore Ivilns;" but the settlement's name was "Swaanendael," on a 
stream called the Horekill; and as I refer to the settlement, and not the 
stream, I use the name of the former. — See Brodhead's History of New York, 
p. 206. 

^ MS. Proceedings in the possession of the Maryland Histoi'ical Society. 

3 Brodhead's History of New York, p. CG6, where tlie Dutch ambassadors 
tell Fendall, the Maryland governor, that, until Utie's unwarrantable pro- 
ceedings, there never had been any difficulty between New Netherlands and 
Virginia or Maryland. 

< For an interesting and graphic account of Utie's visit to " the pretended 
people," see Brodhead's History of New York, pp. GG4, 665, 667, wherein 
Utie is made to appear to be a man of courage and action; and, certainly, 
from what Stuyvesant is reported to have said to the officers who received 
Utie, he may be fairly said to have bullied the Dutch, for they were censured 
for " want of prudence and courage" in their whole treatment of the Mary- 
lander. 



MASON AND Dixon's LINE. 15 

without notice." But these " people" were in pos- 
session of the land by conquest; they held the Swed- 
ish forts, and the fair fields around them, as victors; 
and Utie's whole force consisted but of six followers : 
so that, although the ambassador delivered his mes- 
sage " in a pretty harsh and bitter manner,"^ they 
took no heed of it, but disregarded wholly what they 
termed his "frivolous demands and bloody threaten- 
ings." Nor did the college of the Dutch West India 
Company, in Europe, to whom Lord Baltimore then 
appealed, lend a more attentive ear," and especially 
was it regardless of the plea that the Dutch claim, 
based on purchase and possession, was no better than 
Claiborne's, which had been disallowed. As the 
world went, however, in those . days — whether it has 
mended since is questionable — there was a great dif- 
ference in the two cases. Claiborne was a single in- 
dividual, with little but his talent, energy, and the 
justice of his claims to rely on. The Dutch West 
India Company were rich and powerful ; and their 
reliance was in forts, and cannon, and soldiers: and 
that this was a most important difference, the Mary- 
landers seem to have admitted; for their efforts to 
save the Peninsula rarely went beyond embassies and 
remonstrances; and no change was effected in the re- 
lations of the parties, on the debatable ground, until 

' Brodhead, p. 664. 

2 McMahon, p. 25 ; Brodhead's History, p. 085. 



16 THE HISTORY OF 

the Duke of York took possession of New Amster- 
dam and its dependencies, the Dutch settlements on 
the Peninsula, under a grant from Charles the Second, 
in 166-1. This gave Lord Baltimore an English ruler 
on the Delaware for a neighbor, with whom there 
seems to have been peaceable intercourse for some 
years. But in July, 1673, the Dutch repossessed 
themselves of the New Netherlands,^ and held them 
for fifteen months, during which time the Maryland- 
ers marched to Swaanendael with an armed force." 
This expedition, however, though more formidable 
than Colonel Utie's embassy, does not appear to have 
had better ultimate results; for, in 1674, we find the 
king confirming his previous grants to the Duke of 
York/ and learn that the west bank of the Delaware, 

' Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 322. 

* Bancroft, who mentions this expedition, refers to Bacon's Latcs of Mary- 
land, 1676, chap. 21 ; turning to vrhich, we find an act of assembly curious 
enough to be cited as printed: — 

" An act for punishment of a certain abuse, committed by Henry Ward, of 
Cecil County, gentleman, against the Right Honorable the Lord Proprietary, 
and the public. 

"Viz: Being a member of the Lower House, in 1674, and informing the 
House that he had lost a very good horse in the country's service, in the late 
expedition to the Whore Kills, the assembly allowed him 1800 lbs. tobacco iu 
the public levy. But, it being now made evidently appear that he lost no 
such horse, and that his allegation was egregiously false, &c., he was, by this 
act, fined 4000 lbs. tobacco," &c. 

The title of the act is from the law itself; the rest is the compiler's note. 

The late expedition to Whore Kills, spoken of as such, in 1674, warrants us 
in supposing it to have taken place during the fifteen mouths of Dutch rule, 
from July, 1673, to October, 1G74. 

* The Case of the Troprictors, &c. Hazard's Register, vol. ii. p. 202. 



MASON AND DIXON's LINE. 17 

on the Peninsula, was looked upon as his property by 
everybody, except Lord Baltimore and the Mary- 
landers. 

And now, after a few years, a new actor appeared 
upon the stage; and we find William Penn obtain- 
ing a grant of land, westward of the Delaware, and 
northward of Maryland, on the -ith March, 1681. A 
part of his southern boundary was to be "a circle 
drawn at twelve miles distant from Newcastle north- 
ward, and westwards unto the beginning of the 40th 
degree of northern latitude;" and to the difficulty of 
tracing this circle do we owe Mason and Dixon's 
presence in America. 

In August, 1681, Penn received, through his agent 
and kinsman, Markham, from the Governor of New- 
castle, " that extensive forest," quoting the language 
of Chalmers, " lying twelve miles northward of New- 
castle on the western side of the Delaware ;"'^ and, 
early in the following year, Markham met Lord Bal- 
timore at Upland, now Chester, to settle the bounda- 
ries of the two provinces. Upland was believed to 
be north of the Maryland line; but an observation 
having shown that it was twelve miles to the south 
of it, Penn's agent refused to act further, and re- 
turned to England to report to his principal." 

Now Penn, from the beginning, had been dissatis- 

■ Chalmers's Hist. An's, p. 640. 
2 Ibid., p. G41. 



18 THE HISTORY OF 

fiecl with his province, inasmuch " as he found it 
lying backwards," and the passage up Delaware Bay 
" a place of difficult and dangerous navigation, espe- 
cially in the winter season;" and he had accordingly 
"continually solicited the Duke of York, though in 
vain, for a grant of the Delaware colony." " But, 
at length" — I use the words of Chalmers^ — "wearied 
with solicitation, or hoping for benefit from a posses- 
sion which had hitherto yielded him none, the prince 
conveyed, in August, 1682, as well the town of New- 
castle, with a territory of twelve miles around it, as 
the tract of land extending southward from it, upon 
the river DelaAvare to Cape Henlopen."^ The disco- 
very of the true latitude at Upland made this grant 
more than ever important to Penn; and with the 
title it conferred, such as it was, he came to America, 
and took possession of the territory on the 28th Oc- 
tober, 1682. 

And so, the seed sown at Swaanendael, and 

' Chalmers, p. G43, and authorities there referred to, which seem to make 
out a plain case to the effect of the test. 

* "The Case of the Proprietors and Province of Pennsylvania, and the 
three lower counties of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, to be heard 
before the Right Honorable the Lords of the Committee of his Majesty's 
most Honorable Privy Council for Plantation Affairs, at the Cockpit at "White 
Hall, on Thursday, 23d February, 1737. By W. Murray" — (Lord Mansfield, 
afterwards.) The printed paper, prepared for the committee, is in the col- 
lection of the Maryland Historical Society, and is copied into Hazard's Regis- 
ter, vol. ii. p. 200. It is a setting forth of Penn's case by his counsel, and is 
a useful document, both as regards facts and dates; the latter being co- 
piously given. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 19 

covered up and trodden upon by the Indians, and 
watered with blood, had germinated; and a fair tree, 
with spreading branches, which neither Utie, nor 
the foray of 1673, had been able to uproot, had 
arisen from it, and Penn was reposing in its shade, 
on the banks of the broad river that flowed past it/ 
And so, Delaware was lost to Maryland. 

But this, though the ultimate result, was not ac- 
complished without resistance on the part of Lord 
Baltimore. The king, in council, was appealed to. 
The matter was referred to the Committee of Trade 



' It is, of course, idle to renew now, except for argument's sake, the ques- 
tions mooted and settled near two hundred years ago. But it may be said, 
that if the grant of Charles I. to Lord Baltimore failed to carry, in effect, 
the entire territory conveyed in terms, because of the adverse possession of 
the Dutch at Hoarkill, or Swaanendael, at the date of Lord Baltimore's charter, 
yet that, when Charles the Second obtained the title to the whole by con- 
quest, through the Duke of York, in 1GG4, the acquisition ought to have 
enured to the benefit of the first grantee ; because, notwithstanding the stress 
laid by Penn upon the words " hacknus inciilta,^' in Loi'd Baltimore's grant, it 
can, really, hardly be supposed that the king, claiming the whole territory in 
virtue of Cabot's discovery, could have intended to recognize and protect the 
Dutch at Swaanendael, whom he could only have regarded as "squatters" — 
to apply an expressive modern term — upon his property. But, even were it 
otherwise, and " hactenus incuUa" excluded the Swaanendael settlement, yet 
it was surely only to the extent of the possession and actual cultivation — a 
single brick house and some fields adjacent, such as might have been cleared 
in a year or two. And it is difficult to see how this brick house and fields 
came to spread themselves out until they covered the present State of Dela- 
ware. As already said, the questions involved have long since been settled, 
and against the views here taken ; but the right of Penn, under the grant of 
the Duke of York, to Delaware, as against Lord Baltimore, might not, per- 
haps, be quite as clear were it to be litigated now as it was in 1685. 



20 THEHISTORYOF 

and Plantations. The two proprietors appeared be- 
fore it. There was an eager controversy, in which 
Lord Baltimore relied on his original grant, and 
Penn on the fact that such grant expressly reserved 
cultivated lands, and consequently the settlement of 
Swaanendael and its results.^ Finally, the Commit- 
tee, following a common practice in arbitrations, split 
the difference,^ directing the Peninsula, north of a 
line west from Cape Henlopen, to be divided between 
the parties; and so Penn obtained a road to his 
too-backward-lying province just as wide and as long 
as the present State of Delaware, with a title dating 
back to Godyn and De Vries. 

This was on the 13th of November, 1685, when the 
Duke of York, under whom Penn claimed, was king. 
Charters were of small consideration, and there Avas 
a quo warranto out against that of Maryland.^ Lord 
Baltimore's policy was submission. The tide was 
against him. At last it turned. But it placed a 

' "The Case of the Proprietors," already referred to. 

2 This division of the peninsula was, perhaps, not an original idea with the 
Committee of Trade and Plantations ; for, in the discussion which took place 
between Governor Fendall, Heermans, and Waldi-on, at Patuxent, on the 
IGth October 1G59, the Dutch ambassadors, while denying Lord Baltimore's 
claim in ioto, yet, "to prevent further mischief," proposed that "three 
rational persons" might be chosen from each province, " to meet at a cer- 
tain day and time, about the middle of between the Bay of Chesapeake and the 
aforesaid south river (Delaware), or Delaware Bay, at a hill lying at the head 
of Sassafras River," with full power to settle the boundary between New 
Netherlands and Maryland. — Brodhead's History of New York, p. 667. 

3 McMahon, p. 33 ; Bancroft, ii. p. 243. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 21 

Protestant upon the throne, and was follo^yed by a 
sectarian tempest in Maryland that prostrated the 
proprietary government, and threw the province into 
the hands of the crown, by which its affah'S were 
administered until 1716.^ Penn was not much better 
off in these times than Lord Baltimore. Pennsyl- 
vania, like Maryland, was taken from the proprietor, 
and although soon restored to him, yet he, as well as 
his neighbors, had cogent reasons for postponing the 
controversies about boundary.^ 

On the accession of Queen Anne, Penn was able 
to obtain an order in council on the 23d of June, 
1708, for the enforcement of the decision of 1685,^ 
but nothing was done under it, and in 1718 he died; 
and in February, 1723, we find Mistress Penn making 
an agreement with Lord Baltimore to preserve peace 
upon the borders for eighteen months, in the expecta- 
tion that during this time the boundaries could be 
settled.* But border feuds are not to be stayed by 
parchments; and things seemed to have reached a 
pass that made it necessary for the proprietors to 
address themselves in earnest to the adjustment of 
their differences; and accordingly, on the 10th of 
May, 1732, a deed was executed between the child- 
ren and devisees of Penn and the great grandson of 

' McMalion, p. 35. 

2 1 Proud., pp. 347, 377. 

3 The Case of the Proprietors, &c. ; Hazard, p. 200 ; 1 Proud., p. 294. 
■• Ibid. 



22 THE HISTORY OF 

the first Lord Baltimore, stipulating, in effect, for a 
line due'west from Cape Henlopen,^ across the Penin- 
sula, from whose centre another line should be 
drawn tangent to a circle twelve miles from New- 
castle, while a meridian from the tangent point 
should be continued to within fifteen miles from 
Philadelphia, whence should be traced the parallel of 
latitude westward that was to divide the provinces. 
Should the meridian cut a segment from the circle, 
the segment was to be a part of Newcastle County. 
This parallel of latitude is the Mason and Dixon's 
line of history. 

Attached to this agreement was a small map, well 
known as Lord Baltimore's map. It represented the 
general features of the country in relation to the 
boundary; and the outline of the State of Delaware 
is marked on it in red lines, supposed to have been 
drawn by Lord Baltimore himself. One looks with 
some interest on these red lines, and recollects their 
potency. A king, remarkable in history mainly 
through the circumstances of his death upon the 
scaffold, had granted to a subject what it cost the 
monarch nothing to acquire — the homes, across the 

' The Cape Henlopen here referred to is not the point now known as such, 
opposite to Cape May, and which is called Cape Cornelius on Lord Balti- 
more's map, hut the point where the States of Maryland and Delaware now 
abut together upon the ocean, marked Fenwick's Island on the latest map 
of ]\Iaryland, about fifteen miles to the southward of the present Cape 
Henlopen. 



MASON AND Dixon's LINE. 23 

sea, of a free and brave people, whose hospitality and 
unsuspecting confidence alone made the grant avail- 
able; and, with royal magnificence, had bounded his 
gift by parallels of latitude, the courses of mighty 
rivers, and the headlands of ocean; and the subject, 
with scale and compasses,^ apporti^rtied his territory 
with his neighbors, settled the^Sies of what were to 
become adjacent sovereigiit^, and thus accelerated 
the progress of those events which, at length, extin- 
guished the council-fi.^>%s at which his ancestors had 
warmed themselves(;^hen they were strangers in the 
land, and whoses^st faint blaze was fed with the un- 
strung bows and blunted arrows of the forest princes 
of the Peninsula. One looks with interest, we say, 
on handiwork so trifling, when it becomes so potent 
for results; and the map, in reality, subsequently 
became of great significance. 

But it was one thing to execute the deed of 1732 
on parchment, and another thing to execute it on 
the disputed territory. 

■ " Instructions" MS. at Annapolis, quoting the testimony of Mr. Pai'is, 
describing Lord Baltimore, in the presence of the Penns, looking at the maps, 
"•when the defendant, Lord Baltimore, measured with a pair of compasses 
one of said -written maps, and took his scale or measure from the distance 
between Newcastle and the circle, or part of the circle there drawn, and from 
such measure set off a larger distance for fifteen miles south of Philadelphia, 
at which distance he wanted his head or northern boundary should be 
marked on one of the written maps accordingly." 

" Lord Baltimore's map" was engraved on copper, and impressed, or 
printed, upon all the deeds, commissions, &c. relating to the boundary 
question. 



24 THEHISTORYOF 

In the first place, there was a difficulty in fixing 
the point in Newcastle that was to be the centre of 
the circle. In the next place, it was questioned 
whether the twelve miles were to be a radius or the 
periphery; and lastly, there was a doubt about the 
true Cape Henlopen. The result was to suspend 
proceedings under the deed.^ 

And now, Lord Baltimore did what neither im- 
proved his cause nor bettered his reputation. Treat- 
ing his own deed as a nullity, he asked George the 
Second for a confirmatory grant according to the terms 
of the charter of 1632.^ It was very properly refused, 
and the parties were referred to the Court pf Chan- 
cery; and here Lord Hardwicke decided, in efi'ect,^ 
that the true Henlopen was the point insisted on by 
the Penns ; that the centre of the circle was the 
middle of Newcastle, as near as it could be ascer- 
tained; and that the twelve miles were a radius and 
not the periphery. This was in 1750. Other diffi- 
culties now arose. It was important to Lord Bal- 
timore to shorten, if possible, the statute mile; and 

• The difficulties made by the Maryland commissioners, and the arguments 
thereupon — which are able and copious — on both sides, are to be found in a 
paper in the archives at Annapolis, indorsed: "Instructions on several 
doubts arising among the commissioners touching the execution of the decree 
in the case of Penns vs. Lord Baltimore." The paper is without date, but is 
evidently a law paper issuing from the Court of Chancery in the case re- 
ferred to. 

^ Case of the Proprietors, &c. 

3 1 Vesey, Sen., 444. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 25 

the mode his friends adopted was to measure it on 
the surface of the ground, and not horizontally. So 
Lord Hardwicke was again applied to, and horizontal 
measurements were adopted. This was in March, 
1751. Still, things were not clear. The shorter the 
line across the Peninsula — its beginning on the Dela- 
ware side being fixed — the better for Lord Baltimore, 
for the nearer would the centre of it be to the river. 
And so here, again, his friends came to his aid, and 
insisted that Slaughter's Creek, a channel separating 
Taylor's Island from the Chesapeake, gave the 
western terminus.^ But the Penns demanded that 
the line should be continued to the bay shore itself, 
from Avhich the broad waters of the great estuary 
stretched, unbroken by headland or island, to the 
remote and dim horizon. And again w\as Lord Hard- 
wicke referred to. But, in the meantime. Lord Bal- 
timore died, and the suit abated, and the whole pro- 
ceedings fell to the ground. When they were re- 
vived, and the heir of Lord Baltimore was made a 

I From the east side of Slaughter's Creek to the west shore of Taylor's 
Island was about three miles ; so that the advantage to Lord Baltimore, had 
the line stopped at the creek, would have been a wedge of land a mile and a 
half, or thereabouts, wide at the southern end, running out to nothing at the 
tangent point, some eighty odd miles distant. The exact difference in the 
length of the lines was 3 miles 273J perches, and the exact distance to the 
tangent point 81 miles, 73 chains, 30 links. Could the pretence that the 
twelve miles were a periphery, and not a radius, have been sustained, there 
would have been taken from Delaware the above length by a width of one 
and a half miles at the southern, and about eight miles at the northern end. 

4 



26 THE HISTORY OF 

party to them, new difficulties were presented in his 
refusal to be bound by the acts of his ancestor. If, 
however, there was anything that could equal the 
faculty of the Marylanders in making trouble in this 
long lawsuit, it was the untiring perseverance with 
which the Penns devoted themselves to the contest, 
and followed their opponents in all their doublings. 
And they had their reward; for, on the 4th of July, 
1760, another deed was executed, under which the 
controversy was finally closed.^ 

It is not intended here to discuss the quantum of 
blame proper to be attached to the parties respect- 
ively, who, from time to time, figured in these trans- 
actions. The inquiry is not germain to the matter 
in hand, and would be otherwise unprofitable. When 
the actions of the dead are made a shibboleth of 
party, their examples become practically useless as 
historical teachings. The attempt to exhume the 
details of buried periods of religious or high politi- 
cal excitement, creates too often, as experience has 
shown, a cloud of human passions above the living 
laborers, which obscures the truth to the eyes of the 
present generation. If the title of the elder Penn, 
derived from the Duke of York, which rested on the 



' The deed of 1760 lias been printed by Mr. Edward D. Ingraham, a 
lawyer of standing at the bar of Philadelphia. It is a treatise in itself; and, 
whether for technical accuracy, as a rare piece of conveyancing, legal learn- 
ing, or historical interest, is not surpassed by any paper of its kind. The 
duplicate original is preserved in the archives of Maryland at Annapolis. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 27 

conquest of Peter Stuyvesant, which, in its turn, 
went back to the purchase by Godyn and the oblite- 
rated settlement of De Vries — if this title was an 
indifferent one, inconsistent as it was with the terms 
of the grant to Lord Baltimore ; and if the bisection 
of the Peninsula, at Penn's instance, by the Commit- 
tee of Trade and Plantations, had more in it of con- 
venience than justice, yet the successive lords proprie- 
tary of Maryland, as this rapid sketch has shown, 
were, perhaps, quite as loose in their attempts to 
preserve their territory as their opponents had been 
in the proceedings that gave them foothold upon it. 
The truth probably is, that the Penns and Lord Bal- 
timore had not less land-greed, because their posses- 
sions were estimated in square miles, than is common 
to those who count by square feet only. With them, 
the affair was a business one, and they treated it so 
throughout.^ The elder Penn and the first Lord Pro- 

• There is, in the collection of the Maryland Historical Society, a manu- 
script map made by Col. Thomas Cresap, showing the coimtry about the 
western confines of Maryland, on which there is the following indorsement 
in a handwriting of a much later date: — 

"The Lords Baltimore, in their disputes with the Tenns on one border, 
and Lord Fairfax on the other, had long and deep heads to contend with, and 
did not get their full rights. If Lord Frederick (who signed the deed of 
1760) had come over to Maryland, and lived among his tenants, instead of 
running about the continent of Europe, from Paris to Constantinople, and 
threading the labyrinth of the Grecian Archipelago, having pictures drawn 
of the Greek females of the different islands, it would have been better for 
himself and his province; and he would have escaped the censure of Sterne, 



28 THE HISTORY OF 

r 

prietary of Maryland owe their' prominence in Ameri- 
can history to considerations remote from the merits 
of the minor questions here cfiscussed. The princi- 
ples upon which governments are founded, and not 
the extent of territory they affect, or the mode of its 
acquisition, mainly attract to them the attention of 
mankind. 

The temptation is strong to fill up the meagre out- 
line here given of the boundary controversy, between 
Pennsylvania and Maryland, with some details of the 
border life of the period in question. But time does 
not permit. The prose and poetry of Scott have 
made the borders of Scotland immortal. The same 
great novelist would have found in the feuds of the 
Peninsula, and along the northern confines of Mary- 
land, as ample materials for his genius to combine, as 
much diversity of' character and as thrilling incident, 
as magnificent scenery, and as wild adventure, as 
were furnished him by the history of his native land. 
The Catholic gentleman of Maryland, gallant, brave, 
and impetuous — his battle-cry " Hey for Saint Ma- 
rie's ! " — the stern uncompromising Puritan, shouting 

■who, in his Sentimental Journey, has given him, under the name of Mundun- 
gus, to the •world, in no enviable light." 

The writer of the above had, doubtless, in his mind, " A Tour to the East, in 
the years 1763 and 1764, with Remarks on the City of Constantinople and the 
Turks. Also, Select Pieces of Oriental Wit, Poetry, and Wisdom. By F. Lord 
Baltimore. London : Printed by W. Richardson and S. Clark. MDCCLXVII." 
A copy of this, in the collection of the Historical Society of Maryland, cer- 
tainly does not put Lord Baltimore on a level with the author of Anacharsis. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 29 

as he fought, " In the name of God, fall on."^ The 
Swedes and the Hollanders, — and, among the Indians, 
the Susquehannas, and the Minquaas, and the Dela- 
wares, were all active in the strife that prevailed for a 
long series of years. Nor was it confined to indivi- 
duals. Cresap's quarrel involved the provinces in what 
was almost open war;- and, in "the Case stated," that 
has more than once been resorted to in the prepara- 
tion of this address, it is charged that, on the death 
of Gordon, the Governor of Pennsylvania, in 1736, 
"the invasions from Maryland became more terrible 
and more frequent."" The troubles at the manor of 

' Bozman, vol. ii. p. 525 ; -where an account is furnished of tlie battle of 
the Severn, March 26, 1654. 

" Then the word was given, In the name of God, fall on ; God is our strength ; 
that was the word for Providetice (the then name of Annapolis). The Mary- 
lander's word was, Ile^/ for Saitit Maries. The charge was fierce and sharp 
for a time ; but, through the glorious presence of the Lord of Hosts, mani- 
fested in and towards his poor oppressed people, the enemy could not endure, 
but gave back," &c. &c. — Babylon's Fall, by Leonard Strong. 

2 Day, in his Historical Collections, p. 693, calls Cresap " a blustering and 
desperate bully, who had volunteered his services to the Governor of Mary- 
land to raise a party of marauders to drive off the Pennsylvania settlers." 
This is a very different character from that given to him by Mr. Brantz 
Mayer, in a very admirable discourse pronounced by him before the Mary- 
land Historical Society, called " Logan and Captain Michael Cresap," May 
9, 1851. 

A small volume. The Life of Michael Cresap, was published at Frederick- 
town, Maryland, in 1826. It is without arrangement, and has neither begin- 
ning nor ending; but is valuable, nevertheless, as connected with border 
troubles. There is a copy in the collection of the Maryland Historical So- 
ciety. 

' Hazard's Register, vol. ii. p. 212. 



30 THEHISTORYOF 

Nottingham, near Chester, brought Hart, the Go- 
vernor of Maryland, and Keith, the Governor of 
Pennsylvania, with their respective retinues of armed 
men, together upon the scene ;^ and, indeed, there 
was hardly a settlement upon the boundary, or near 
to it, that had not its attendant narrative of romantic 
interest. Then, again, there were the time-servers of 
; those days,^ the men who " carried water on both 
shoulders," to use the phrase that has come down to 
us, and, with a patent from Lord Baltimore, and a 
grant from Penn, obtained exemption from all ser- 
vice, by being Marylanders when called upon from 
Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvanians when Maryland 
had need of them. 

These are themes for the future novelist, however, 
rather than the historian. They had but small in- 
fluence, if any, on the general current of public 
afi'airs; and they are referred to only for the purpose 
of showing that too much importance was not at- 
tached to the settlement of the boundary between 
the provinces. To this we will now return. 
n/ The commissioners appointed under the deed of 
1760 addressed themselves, at once, to the comple- 

' McMahon, p. 86. 

2 The deed of 1732. The original is not to be found in the archives of 
Maryland, -where a duplicate original ought to be ; but there is a printed 
copy, with the following imprint to the pamphlet: "Philadelphia: Printed 
by B. Franklin, at the new printing-office near the market. MDCCXXXIII." 
A rough copy (wood cut) of Lord Baltimore's map is appended to the deed. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 31 

tion of the peninsular east and west line, and to 
tracing the twelve mile circle — appointing to this 
end the best surveyors they could obtain. The mode 
of proceeding was to measure with the common 
chain, holding it as nearly horizontal as they could, 
the direction being kept by sighting along poles, set 
up in what they called vistos, cut by them through 
the forest. The original field-notes of these surveys 
are preserved in the Maryland archives, and do credit 
to the parties.^ 

But the progress made was very slow; and, at the 
end of three years, little more was accomplished than 
the peninsular line and the measurement of a radius. 
This seems to have disappointed the expectations of 
the proprietors, for we find that, on the 4th of August, 
1763, the Penns, Thomas and Richard, and Lord 
Baltimore, then being together in London, agreed 
with Charles Mason^ and Jeremiah Dixon, " two ma- 



1 The surveyors of 1761 were, John F. A. Priggs, John Lukcns, Archibald 
McClean, Archibald Emory, Jonathan Hall, John Watson, John Stapler, Tho- 
mas Garnett, and William Shankland; of these, Garnett, Hall, Lukens, and 
McClean seem to have been the most active. — See Archives at Atmapolis, arid 
Proceedings of the Commissioners. 

In 1763, David Rittenhouse had been employed by the Penn family "in 
making some geographical arrangements preparatory to the final establish- 
ment of the boundaries." — Memoirs of Rittenhouse, p. 146. 

2 The facts and dates, regarding the doings of Messrs. ISIason and Dixon 
in running their lines, are all obtained from their original field-notes pre- 
served in the State Department at Annapolis. 

Bancroft speaks of Mason and Dixon as having run the line in 1761. It 



32 THE HISTORY OF 

thematicians for surveyors," " to mark, run out, settle, 
fix, and determine all such parts of the circle, marks, 
lines, and boundaries, as were mentioned in the seve- 
ral articles or commissions, and were not yet com- 
pleted." And, thus. Mason and Dixon appear upon 
the scene, leaving England towards the close of Au- 
gust, and landing at Philadelphia on the 15th of 
November, 1763. They began their work at once. 
They adopted the peninsular east and west line of 
their predecessors, the radius and the tangent point. 
This left them the tangent, from the middle point of 
the peninsular line, to " the tangent point," the me- 
ridian from thence to a point fifteen miles south of 
the most southern part of the city of Philadelphia, 
with the arc of the circle to the west of it, the fifteen 
mile distance, and the parallel of latitude westward 
from its termination, to ascertain and establish. 

was not commenced till 1764, and not completed by them until 1767, and not 
finally marked till 1768. — See Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 396. 

Mason was an assistant of Dr. Bradley at the Royal Observatory at 
Greenwich. — Encyclopedia Americana. 

After their employment in America, they were employed, under the direc- 
tion of the Royal Society, to observe the transit of Venus across the sun at 
the Cape of Good Hope, in 1769. — Philosophical Transactions, vol. Iviii. p. 270. 
London. 

When Mayer's Lunar Tables were sent to London to compete for the prize 
offered by the Board of Longitude, Mason made improvements and correc- 
tions in them, and they were published as " Mayer's Lunar Tables, improved 
by Mr. Charles Mason," in 1787. Lalande says, in his Bib. Astron., p. 601 : 
" Mason fut desesp6re de n'avoir pas les 250,000 livres qu'il croyait lui etre 
dues pour les tables de la lune ; mais il avait mal interprets I'acte du parle- 
ment: ses tables n'etaient pas faitcs d'apres la thcorie." — Delambre, Bio- 
gra2)hie Universelle. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 33 

They brought to their task, we may suppose, more 
perfect instruments, and more accurate mathematical 
knowledge, than the previous surveyors/ But, so 
far as the work of these last went. Mason and Dixon 
do not seem to have mended it; for they record, in 
their proceedings of November 13, 1764, that the 
true tangent line, ascertained by themselves, " would 
not pass one inch to the westward or eastward" of 
the post marking the tangent-point set in the ground 
by those whom they superseded; so that, after all, 
the sighting along poles, and the rude chain-measure- 
ments of 1761 and 1762, would have answered every 
purpose, had the proprietors only thought so." V 

Having verified the tangent point, they proceeded 

' " The astronomical observations were made with an excellent sector of six 
feet radius, constructed by Mr. Bird, the first which ever had the plumb-line 
passing over and bisecting a point at the centre of the instrument." — Maslce- 
bjne's Introduction to Mason's Observations: Philosophical Transactions, vol. 
Iviii. p. 271, 1768. 

The sector would seem to have belonged to Mr. Tenn. 

" The volume of the Philosophical Transactions, above referred to, contains 
a very minute description of Mason and Dixon's mode of continuing a right 
line, which they begin by saying "was done by setting up marks with the 
assistance of an equal altitude or transit instrument (for it was contrived so 
as to serve either purpose at pleasure), made by Mr. John Bird, of the same 
construction with that described by Lc Monnier, in the preface to the single 
volume of the French Ilistoire Celeste." " The telescope magnified 25 times." 
Ibid., p. 274. 

"The measurements were made with a chain, established from a brass sta- 
tute-yard which was proved and corrected, in the course of the work, by 
another statute-chain (kept only for tliat purpose) made from the said brass 

yard." — Ibid., p. 277. 

& 



34 THE HISTORY OF 

to measure, on its meridian, fifteen miles from the 
parallel of the most southern i^art of Philadelphia, 
the north wall of a house on Cedar Street occupied 
by Thomas Plumstead and Joseph Huddle. They 
thus ascertained the north-eastern corner of Mary- 
land, which was, of course, the beginning of the 
parallel of latitude that had been agreed upon as the 
boundary between the provinces. 

On the 17th of June, 1765, they had carried the 
parallel of latitude to the Susquehanna, and there- 
upon received instructions to continue it "as far as 
the provinces of Maryland and Pennsylvania were 
settled and inhabited." 

On the 27th of October, they had reached the 
North Mountain, and they record in their journal 
that they got Captain Shelby to go with them to its 
summit, " to show them the course of the Potomac," 
when they found that they could see the Allegheny 
Mountain for many miles, and judged it, "by its ap- 
pearance, to be about fifty miles distance, in the 
direction of the line." 

On the 4th of June, in the following year, 1766, 
we find them on the summit of the Little Allegheny, 
and at the end of that summer's work. The Indians 
were now troublesome, and they were masters in the 
woods.^ 

• One of the few remarks contained in the field-notes of Mason and 
Dixon is made under date of September 2oth of this year, 17GG, as they 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 35 

In 1767, the surveyors began operations on the 
parallel of latitude, late. A negotiation with the 
Six Nations was necessary, which Sir William John- 
son had promised to conduct, and this was not con- 
cluded before May ; so that it was not until the 8th 
of June that the surAcyors reached their halting- 
place of the preceding year, on the summit of the 
Little Allegheny. On the lith of June they had ad- 
vanced as far as the summit of the Great Allegheny, 
where they were joined by an escort of fourteen In- 
dians, with an interpreter, deputed by the Chiefs of 
the Six Nations to accompany them. And so the In- 
dian becomes their protector against the Indian, as 
they mark the boundary of the sovereignties that, 
before long, are to obliterate the very memory of their 
aboriginal possessors. And the escort seem to have 
had some vague apprehension in regard to the results 
of all this gazing into the heavens, and measuring 

■were reviewing the line on their return. The entry is in Vinson's hand- 
Avriting: — 

"Nota Bene: From any eminence in the line, where fifteen or twenty miles 
of the Yisto can be seen (of which there are many), the said line, or visto, 
very apparently shows itself to form a parallel of latitude. 

"The line is measured horizontal; the hills and mountains, with a 16^-foot 
level ; and besides the mile posts, we have set posts in the true line marked 
IF, on the west side, all along the line opposite the stationary points, where 
the sector and transit instrument stood. The said posts stand in the middle 
of the'visto, which is about eight yards wide." 

See also Fhilosophkal Transactions, already referred to, where it is said 
that this visto of eight yards. wide was " seen about two miles, beautifully 
terminating to the eye in a point." 



36 THEHISTORYOF 

upon the earth, and to have become restless and dis- 
satisfied; and, on the 25th of August, the surveyors 
note that " Mr. John Green, one of the chiefs of the 
Mohawk nation, and his nephew, leave them, in order 
to return to their own country." The roving Indians 
of the wilderness, regardless of the escort, begin also 
to give the party of white men uneasiness; and on 
the 29th of September, twenty-six of the assistants 
quit the work for fear of the Shawnees and Delawares. 
Mason and Dixon have now but fifteen axemen left 
with them; but, nothing disheartened, they send 
back to Fort Cumberland for aid, and push forward 
with the line. At length, they reach a point, two 
hundred and forty-four miles from the river Dela- 
ware,^ and within thirty-six miles- of the whole dis- 
tance to be run. And here, in the bottom of a valley, 
on the borders of a stream, marked Dunkard Creek 
on their map^ they come to an Indian war-path, 
winding its way through the forest. And here, their 
Indian escort tell them, that it is the will of the Six 



' The exact distance, as given in the MS. return of the commissioners, 
preserved at Annapolis, and dated Nov. 9, 1768, is 244 miles, 38 chains, and 
36 links from the Delaware, or 230 miles, 18 chains, and 21 links from the 
place of beginning, at the north-east corner of Maryland. 

2 By Col. Graham's report, the five degrees of longitude in the latitude of 
the boundary line would make the southern boundary of Pennsylvania 266 
miles, 24 chains, and 80 links, from which, deducting the distance run — viz: 
230 miles, 18 chains, and 21 links — and we have 36 miles, 6 chains, and 59 
links as the exact distance remaining to be run from the war-path, west. — 
Graham, p. 35. 



MASON AND DIXON 'S LINE. 37 

Nations that the surveys shall be stayed. There is 
no alternative but obedience; and, retracing their 
steps, they return to Philadelphia, and, reporting all 
these facts to the commissioners under the deed of 
1760, receive an honorable discharge on the 26th of 
December, 1767. Subsequently, and by other hands, 
the line was run out to its termination ; and a cairn 
of stones, some five feet high, in the dense forest, 
now marks the termination of Mason and Dixon's 
line, calhng by that name the southern boundary of 
Pennsylvania ; and, standing on the cairn, and look- 
ing to the east and north, a fresher growth of trees 
in these directions indicates the ranges of the vistas, 
so often mentioned.^ But mount the highest tree 
adjacent to the cairn, that you may note the highest 
mountain within the range of vision, and then, 
ascending its summit, take in the whole horizon at a 
slance, and seek for a single home of a single de- 
scendant of the sylvan monarchs, whose war-path 
limited the surveys, and you will seek in vain. But 
go back to the cairn, and hsten there, in the quiet of 
the woods, and a roll, as of distant thunder, will 
come unto the ear, and a shrill shiiek wiR pierce it, 
as the monster and the miracle of modern ingenuity 
— excluded from Pennsylvania as effectually, by the 
line we have described, as the surveyors of old were 

1 From the verbal statement of B. H. Latrobe, Civil Engineer. The corner 
is not far from the Board Tree Tunnel, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. 



38 THEHISTORYOF 

stayed by the Indian war-path — rushes around the 
south-western angle of the State, on its way from the 
city which perpetuates the title of the Lord Proprie- 
tary of Maryland, to find a breathing-place on the 
Ohio, in the " Pan-handle" of Virginia/ 

The lines, whose history has thus been given, were 
directed to be marked in a particular manner, both 
by the agreements of the parties, and the decree of 
Lord Hardwicke ; and the surveyors accordingly 
planted, at the end of every fifth mile, a stone, 
graven with the arms of the Penns on the one side, 
and of the Baltimore family on the other, marking 
the intermediate miles Avith smaller stones, having a 
P on one side, and an M on tlie other. The stones 
Avith the arms were all sent from England. This 
was done on the parallel of latitude as far as Side- 
ling Hill: but here, all wheel transportation ceasing 
in 1766, the further marking of the line was the 
vista of eight yards wide, with piles of stone on the 
crests of all the mountain ranges, built some eight 
feet high, as far as the summit of the Allegheny, 

' The southern boundai'y of Pennsylvania, five degrees of longitude, was 
not long enough to take the line to the Ohio, and its western boundary being 
a meridian, and the course of the Ohio, upwards, being first, gently, and 
afterwards abruptly, inclining to the east, the consequence was, that a nar- 
row strip was left between the river and the meridian, belonging to Virginia, 
and which is as well known in Virginia as "the Pan-handle," as the capital 
of the State is known as Richmond — there being a fancied resemblance in 
this projection, north of the Pennsylvania line, to the handle of a frying- 
jian, looking upon the body of the State as the basin, or bowl. 



MASON AND DIXON 'S LINE. 39 

beyond wliicli the line was marked with posts, around 
which, stones and earth were thrown, the better to 
preserve them.^ 

The map of the lino was not completed for some 
time after the field Avork terminated. It was then 
engraved, and copies were distributed among the 
parties interested. The Maryland copy I have seen. 
It represents the line, with the country on either 
side — the width of the engraving being about an 
inch and a half — beginning at Cape Henlopen and 
extending to the Indian war-path. The crossings of 
streams, mountain-ranges, and roads are carefully 
marked. The rOad-crossings are quite numerous on 
the Peninsula:' beyond the Allegheny, there are but 
two, one of which is lettered " Braddock's Road." 
Houses, where they occur, are' designated, with their 
distances from the line, and are not unfrequent as 
far as the Susquehanna. But the topographical, 
conventional sign for forest, and thick woods, is, 

' rroceedings of Commissioners, MS. in Archives at Annapolis: In 1768, 
the Commissioners had the stones, that had been planted, examined, and sun- 
dry others planted, where Mason and Dixon had omitted to do so — and there 
is an autograph memorandum of S. B. Bordley, Esq., dated Sept. 10, 1708, 
at Annapolis, in regard to the stone at "the middle point" on the peninsular 
east and west line, stating, that it had been dug up by persons engaged 
in money-digging! the belief being strong that the buccaneers, Kidd and 
others, had landed and buried treasures on the shores of the Chesapeake. 
No doubt, ignorant persons, knowing nothing of the survey, had supposed 
the stone, with its armorial bearings, to be a mark left by the freebooters to 
indicate the locality of their treasure. 



40 THEHISTORYOF 

after all, that which gives character to the general 
appearance of the map. 

The history of Mason and Dixon's line has thus 
been brought to a close ; and before parting with 
those whose names have become so familiar, it would 
be pleasant to add some information in regard to 
their individual character and personal appearance. 
But the most careful search has furnished no data on 
these points. Their letters are the merest business 
letters. Their journal is the most naked of records. 
The only thing for fancy, even, to draw inferences 
from, is their handwriting, and I confess to having 
studied all their autographs, in the hope of voicing 
them. But they are almost as silent as the stars, 
whose positions they were employed, night after 
night, in noting. Still, they are not wholly dumb. 
Mason's signature is a remarkably good one — writ- 
ten slowly and carefully, and with very great imi- 
formity in its size, which is that of common, full, 
running hand. The Christian name is abbreviated 
to Cha : with a colon to indicate the abbreviation ; 
and in writing the surname, a dot has always been 
patiently made, from which to start the first hair- 
stroke of the M. The remaining letters are written 
in couples. In no signature, of many hundred, has 
the entire surname been written without taking the 
pen twice from the paper. It is the same, whether 
recording the arrival in Philadelphia from England, 



FAC-SIMILES OF MASON AND DIXON's SIGNATURES. 
Litrary of Congress; _^ 




^^^^^^ 



MASON AND DIXON's LINE. 41 

or noting the desertion of a majority of the assist- 
ants for fear of the Indians. I infer, from these small 
hints, that Mason was a cool, deliberate, pains-taking 
man, never in a hurry; a man of quiet courage, who 
crossed the Monongahela with fifteen men, because 
it was his duty to do so, though he would have much 
preferred thrice the number at his heels. Dixon's 
signature tells a different story somewhat. He 
began by making it as goodly, nearly, as Mason's, 
and of about the same size. But this was evidentlv 
an effort. All he seems to have cared to do was to 
put something on paper that would indicate his pre- 
sence. At times, his a: is two c's placed back to 
back; again, it is the roughest cross. Occasionally, 
his signature is very small; again, it is as large and 
sprawling as a schoolboy's ; from all which, I infer 
that he was a younger man, a more active man, a 
man of an impatient spirit and a nervous tempera- 
ment, just such a man as worked best with a sober- 
sided colleague. 

It is cheerfully admitted that all this is very idle 
speculation; and the only excuse for its introduction 
is a desire to vary, in some small degree, the dulness 
of a narrative, affording so few events of striking 
interest as that we are engaged in.^ 

' Besides the boixndary line, run as described in the text, Mason and Dixon, 
under instructions from the Royal Society, availed themselves of the occasion 
to determine the length of a degree of latitude in the Provinces of Tennsyl- 



42 THEHISTORYOF 

There is another chapter, however, in the history 
of this celebrated line. In the course of time, the 
stone which marked the north-east corner of Mary- 
land was undermined by a brook, and, falling down, 
was removed and built into the chimney of a neigh- 
boring farm-house.^ When it was missed, the Le- 
gislatures of the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland,^ 
and Delaware, took the matter in hand, and a joint 
commission was appointed, which, obtaining the 
services of Lieutenant-Colonel James D. Graham, a 
distinguished officer of Topographical Engineers of 
the United States, caused the work of Mason and 
Dixon to be reviewed as far as was necessary. 

To this end, the twelve mile radius was once more 
measured; the tangent point and point of intersec- 
tion were re-located; the meridian and parallel of lati- 
tude were run, in part, so as to find their intersec- 
tion ; and the corner-stone was again satisfactorily 
and permanently set.^ 

vania and Maryland. Their proceedings in doing ■which are reported at 
great length, and in the minutest detail, in the Philosophical Transactions, and 
for which purpose the line, from the middle point on the peninsular line, was 
made use of. 

Mason died in Pennsylvania in February, 1787. — Encyclopedia Americana. 
" Mason." 

Dixon died at Durham, England, iu 1777. — Lalande, Bibliographie Astro- 
nomiqur, p. 50; quoted in Biographie Unircrsclle, "Mason," where it is said, 
on the same authority, " que Dixon etait ne dans un mine de charbon." 

' Graham's Report, p. 44. 

* Resolution of December Session, 1845. No. 18. 

' Graham's Report, p. 79, et seq. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 43 

Colonel Graham's work corroborated, in all im- 
portant particulars, the work of his predecessors. 
Some errors were discovered, however. The tangent 
point had been placed 157.§ feet too far to the north, 
and the point of intersection 143.7 feet too fiir to the 
south. There was an error, also, in tracing the curve 
between the two points, the correction of which made 
the State of Maryland one acre and eighty-seven 
hundredth parts of an acre larger than Mason and 
Dixon left the province of the same name.^ The 

' Among errors, indicated by Colonel Graham, is one in the latitude of the 
Observatory on Cedar Street; though this can hardly be called an error, be- 
cause the correction is due, not to' ffny mistake made by Mason and Dixon, 
but to a truer appreciation* of the exact form of the earth, than was had in 
their day. The true latitude is 39° 5G' 37''.4 N., or 8'^3 more than the lati- 
tude of IMason and Dixon. See Graham's Report, p. 21, in notis. 

One of the results of»Colonel Graham's survey was to change the reputed 
citizenship of several of the border inhabitants. "Mr. W. Smith," says 
Colonel Graham, "a gentleman who has once served as a member of the Le- 
gislature of Delaware, resided a full half mile within the State of Pennsylva- 
nia, measured in the shortest direction from his dwelling-house to the circular 
boundary." — Grahaiii's Report, p. 86. 

Christiana Church, too, was found to be in Pennsylvania.— /6?c?. 
The history of that portion of the curve east of the due north line, is not 
within the design of this address. Col. Graham states that it was unmarked, 
and that he ran about 3| miles of it for the convenience of the neighbor- 
ing- residents. In the Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. iv. 8d series, 
p. 11 (1842), is a paper entitled, "Mode of tracing a curve of a very large 
radius, &c.," in which reference is made to field-notes of a survey completed 
in 1701, under a warrant from William Penn to Isaac Tailer, of Chester 
County, and Thomas Pierson, of Newcastle County; who, in the presence of 
Justices of each county, began "at the end of the Horse-Dike next the town 
of Newcastle," and ran due north twelve miles to a white oak marked with 



44 THEHISTORYOF 

very able report of Colonel Graham, in which all 
these matters are stated, was made in 1850, and has 
been referred to, frequently, in the preparation of this 
address. And now, the Mason and Dixon's line, of 
common parlance, begins at a " triangular prismatic 
post of granite," with the letters M D and P on the 
sides, respectively, facing the States to Avhich these 
letters refer, with the names of the late commis- 
sioners. Key, Eyre, and Riddle, and the date, 1849, 
cut deep on the north side under the letter P} This 
stone is upon land belonging to William tfohnson, in 
a deep ravine, on the margin of a small brook and 
near its source ; and, from this beginning, the line 
stretches far westward, over mountain and valley, 
flood and fell, to its western end, the cairn of stones 
in the forest. 

And thus, having brought our narrative down from 
1629, when the purchase by Godyn furnished the re- 
mote cause of Mason and Dixon's appointment, to 
1850, when Colonel Graham made his report, we 
have arrived, in truth, at the end of our history : but 
we cannot leave the subject without a few words, 
suggested by one of the earliest entries in Mason and 
Dixon's journal. 

It is there recorded that, in November, 1763, they 

twelve notches; and thence traced the curve eastward to the river Delaware, 
and westward far enough to complete, in the whole, f of a semicircle. This 
line is stated to have been "well marked with three notches." 
' Graham's Report, p. 84. 



MASON AND DIXOn's LINE. 45 

employed a carpenter to build an observatory at the 
southern part of the city of Philadelphia/ It did 
not take long to erect it, for we soon find them at 
work there; and on the 6th of January, 1764, they 
determined its latitude to be 39° 56' 29". 1 north; and 
this was their first astronomical calculation in Ame- 
rica ; and humble and temporary as the building may 

' The Observatory is mentioned in the following letter, which affonls a 
fair specimen of the style of the correspondence : — 

"Sir: According to your desire mentioned to Mr. Dixon, at Chestertown, 
we have compared the sums of money paid by the Right Hon'''" Lord Balti- 
more, and the Honorable Thos: and Rich'd Penn, Esq" (towaixl dividing the 
Provinces), to us and Mr. McLane since our arrival in America; and find on 
the whole that we have received 615 £ more of the Proprietors of Pensilva- 
nia than of Lord Baltimore. 

We expect you will please to send G or 700 £ that Mr. McLane may re- 
ceive it at Frederick Town (as you proposed) the 24th of this mouth, we 
having no cash to proceed Avith. 

AVe are S"- 

Your most obedient 

humble servants, 

CHA: MASON. 
JER. DLXON. 
The North Mountain, 
April 14, 1766. 

P. S. Besides the above balance, the Pennsylvania Proprietors have jjaid 
for erecting the Observatory at Philadelphia & carriage to Brandiwiue, 
&c. &c. 

To T. RinouT, Esqf 

Secretary to His Excellency 

Horatio Sharpe, Esq. Governor 
of Maryland at 

Annapolis." 



46 THEHISTORYOF 

have been in which it was made, it was the first^ on 
the continent devoted exckisively, on its erection, to 
[ the purposes of astronomical science. From the lati- 
tude, thus determined, they found the commencement 
of the parallel to which they were to give their 
names; and in 1764, they began, as we have seen, 
their slow march along it, just ninety years ago, not 
longer than a man may live; and in 1765, they 
climbed the summit of the North Mountain, that 
they might judge of the course of the Potomac. To 
the eastward, stretching far to the right and left, were 
the densely wooded slopes of the Blue Ridge, scarred 
in their midst by the naked rocks that marked the 
outlet of the vast lake that once covered what is now 
the valley of Virginia, and which had shrunk, as its 
waters rushed to the ocean through the gap, into the 
rivers Potomac and Shenandoah.^ To the westward, 
parallel ranges of mountains extended as far as the 
eye could reach, the depressions on whose crests sug- 
gested the places where the Potomac intersected 
them, and so furnished to the surveyors some rude 
notion of the topography of the region. Indications 
of civilized man were rare around, and the most 

' Eittenhouse's Observatory at Norriton was commenced Nov. 1768, but 
not completed till April, 1769. — Memoirs of RiUe7ihouse, p. 165. 

Lalande, in his Bibliographie Astrojiomiqite, treating of the numerous ob- 
servatories in different parts of the world, in 1792, says: "In America, I 
^ know of no observatory but that of JVIr. Rittenhouse, at Philadelphia." 

2 See Jeiferson's Notes on Virginia, in which he speculates on the geology 
of the State at Harper's Ferry, p. 7. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 47 

striking of these was the fortress among tlie hills, 
whose gray walls of solid masonry are still visible on 
the banks of the river, in the ruins of Fort Frede- 
rick.^ In 1767, the surveyors had reached the war- 
path ; and, as at the Indian bidding, they retraced 
their steps, and looked back from the western slope 
of the first mountain they ascended on their home- 
ward journey, they recognized no sign of civilization, 
and knew of none towards which their labors would 
have led them, had they been permitted to proceed. 
They, probably, were not imaginative men, and it is 
not likely that they indulged in many reflections as 
to the future of the world of mountain and forest 
and boundless plains, on Avhich they thus turned their 
backs, on their way to their observatory in Philadel- 
phia. But, had they been as poetical as Darwin, who 
anticipated the advent of steam to 

" Drag the slow barge, or drive tlie rapid car;" 

or, as prophetic as Bishop Berkeley, in the vision, in 
which he exclaims, 

"Westward the course of empire takes its way — " 

it is not probable they would have foreseen that, 
when, eighty-two years later, their work came to be 

1 Erected in 1756 by Governor Sharpe, and garrisoned in that year by 
Colonel Dagworthy. It is not far from the^^esent town of Hancock, and a 
prominent object to the traveller on the railroad, on the opposite side of the 
Potomac, after passing the North IMountain in Virginia, going west. It was 
a frontier fort, to protect the country round about from the Indians.— 
McSherry's History of Maryland,^. 139. 



48 THE HISTORY OF 

reviewed, it would be by an officer of the army of a 
Republic of twenty-three millions of inhabitants — a 
Republic whose rapid development, in all that con- 
stituted the true greatness of a people, w^ould be the 
wonder of the world — a Republic whose capital, with 
its stately edifices, would be reflected in the waters 
of the river, whose devious way they had just sought 
to trace ; and which would number among its marble 
piles, an observatory, adding new planets to our 
system, while its astronomers and mathematicians 
taught man the order of the winds, that they might 
bear him more certainly across the sea'.jNJoiWould 
they have foreseen that, not here alone, in the capi- 
tal, would the skies find readers, but that an observa- 
tory, one only of many like it in the Republic, would 
crown the summit of a hill, looking down on a great 
city^ near three hundred miles westward of the 
war-path so frequently referred to ; an observatory, 
whose corner-stone would be laid by one who had 
been the President of the Republic, of which his 
father had been the President before him, and whose 
walls would arise in comeliness and strength, to in- 
close all the costly appliances which science and art 
might place within man's reach to enable him to ex- 
plore the recesses of the heavens. As poets and 
dreamers even, such imaginings as these were, in all 
likelihood, beyond their extremest vision. And sup- 

' The Cincinuati Observatory is here referred to, whose contributions to 
astronomical knowledge are so highly appreciated in the scientific world. 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 49 

pose they had been told that the lightning, which 
Franklin had then but recently rendered innocuous, 
was to become man's active, daily, and domestic 
friend, transmitting his thoughts, visibly, faster than 
his mind could think, so as to require him to prepare, 
beforehand, the work his agent w^as to do; and that, 
among others of its wondrous performances, it would 
make the clock, as it beat its seconds in the western 
observatory, impart isochronism to other clocks be- 
yond the mountains, enabling, at the same time, the 
watchers of the stars to whisper, in the silence of the 
night, their discoveries to comrade gazers a thousand 
miles away. Had such things as these been told to 
Mason and his colleague, they might well have sup- 
posed themselves in a madman's company, or listen- 
ing to the thousand and second tale of Scheherezade. 
And yet, the incredible of 1767 is the schoolboy's 
learning of to-day. Equally startled would they have 
been, could the story of the Revolution, then so near 
at hand, have been foretold to these servants of the 
Lord Proprietary of Maryland and the Proprietors of 
Pennsylvania, who never spoke of their immediate 
superiors in office except as " the gentlemen commis- 
sioners," and in the deferential and obsequious spirit 
that was so soon to disappear.^ But more astonished 

» The following is from the fielJ-notes of Mason and Dixon, 176G: — 

" Mar. 15: C. Mason left Annapolis, and proceeded for the North Mountain, 

to continue the line. J. Dixon left Philadelphia to attend the gentlemen 

commissioners at Chester Town." 

7 



50 THE HISTORY OF 

still can we imagine them, could they have been told, 
that the results of this revolution having been power, 
and might, and majesty, and boundless prosperity, of 
which every individual in the land was a participant, 
the line they ran would grow into consequence, and 
be regarded with dread, as fierce intemperate men, 
with small pride in the past, and less care for the 
future, spoke of it as a line to be studded with for- 
tresses from end to end, on opposite sides of which 
hostile nations would be arrayed in arms. But if, 
with the license of the occasion, we may suppose 
such things to have been suggested to them, we can, 
at the same time, imagine their reply, and we can 
almost hear them saying: " These uses, to which you 
put the lightning; this erection of cities on river 
shores, in Indian lands ; this tale of battle, and blood- 
shed, and victory ; this dethroning of monarchs and 
uplifting of their subjects, are astounding results 
that we cannot appreciate, for we see no elements to 
produce them, and they shock all the prejudices of 
our education. To time we leave their development. 
But, that a people blessed beyond all others, in their 
realization, if realized they are to be, and occupying 
the proudest place among the nations, because of 
their wondrous unity, under a government that ex- 
tent of dominion enfeebles not — should willingly per- 
mit their Union to be dissolved, we cannot believe; 
because, here, we are dealing, not with the future of 
science or politics, but with the principles of hu- 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE. 51 

manity common to all ages; and, depend upon it, 
whatever the few may wish, the many will be true ; 
and this, our line of survey, will, after all, owe its 
notoriety to ephemeral oratory, in which it figures as 
a mere phrase of cant, or to addresses, which will 
bring to light the few brief records w^e have left of 
our transactions." And these, the words which we 
have put into the mouths of Mason and Dixon, for 
the sake of the unity of our discourse, we doubt not, 
will be words of prophecy, as regards the destiny of 
our country; and that time, which has developed the 
excitement that has given prominence to the line in 
question, will furnish, in due season, the solution of 
present difficulties; and that, while the Mason and 
Dixon's line of geography will continue to be that 
whose heraldic insignia are still to be found in field 
and forest, the Mason and Dixon's line of politics 
will gradually change its position until, as cloud- 
shadows pass, leaving earth in sunlight, we shall be 
seen, of all, to be a united and homogeneous people,^ 

' For the causes, and their operation, to which this result ■will Le attribu- 
table, see the note to page 6. They are more particularly described in the 
following extract from a speech of the author on another occasion, and 
which is quoted here, not for the purpose of invoking the official capacity 
in which it was delivered as authority, but that the suggestion of the text 
may be more fully understood, without introducing matter not germain to the 
scope of the address into the text itself: — 

" African colonization offers, in its settlements on the coast of Africa, the 
only solution of the difficult question presented by the existence, in the same 
land, of two free races between whom nmnlgnmation b}' intermarriage is im- 



52 HISTORY OF MASON AND DIXON S LINE. 

not in this generation, or the next, or the next, but 
still, at an early day, looking to what we believe, 
under God, will be the duration of the Republic. 

practicable ; and it opens an outlet, better than any other, through -which the 
weaker of the two may escape from the pressure of that vast European im- 
migration, which threatens to crush it in a strife for bread — an immigration 
withheld in mercy until new homes in another continent could be prepared 
for those who were to disappear before it. 

" There are some who believe that this immigration, together with the 
natural increase of our population, may, one day, so affect wages as to make 
it questionable, whether free white labor, becoming by that time acclimated 
to the toil of every part of our country, may not be cheaper, under all cir- 
cumstances, than slave labor; in which event, it is supposed that a volun- 
tary emancipation, prompted by interest alone, may make our whole colored 
population free. Should such anticipations ever be realized, the import- 
ance of the outlet which colonization has opened in the direction of Liberia, 
will be all the more highly appreciated; and should slavery, from mere 
lack of other topics for that party excitement which is a necessity, it would 
seem, of our condition, still continue to be discussed, eagerly and angrily, in 
high places, the discussion will, at all events, be made harmless, by the gra- 
dual withdrawal of the colored race, of their own accord, from the theatre of 
the strife." — Thirty- Seventh Annual Report of the American Colonization Society, 
p. 26. January 7, 1854. 



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